Shyp, the San Francisco startup that aims to make shipping easy, will let you use your smartphone to summon a courier to your door. If you want, it will even pack your stuff for you. But the company, which launched in 2013, has been in no hurry to expand. It still only has couriers and warehouses in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

But as of today, there is an aspect of its service that's now available throughout the U.S. You have to pack your items and take them to Fedex, UPS, or the post office, which at first blush might sound like you're doing all the work that would otherwise be done by Shyp. But before you do, you can see all the service offerings from Fedex, UPS, and the USPS and choose the cheapest one that will deliver your package on time. You then pay for shipping and print a label using Shyp's mobile app or web interface.

The iPhone is the Default Phone, the one you buy when you want a phone, not a project.

The Google Pixel changes that. It offers the look and competence of an iPhone, with a truly great camera and loads of innovative software and services. It changes my answer to the question I hear most often: What phone should you get?

To mirror the Rio Olympics, you may have noticed interactive doodles for the last 16 days on the Google home page. And you could download those games in the Google Play and Apple iOS stores. In some ways more fun, and lots less controversial than the Rio events or all the political games

"This wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs were around" is one of the most overused insults that even fans will hurl at Apple CEO Tim Cook when he does something they don't like. Fact is, you can apply the line to many of the things that Cook has done to make Apple as powerful, profitable, and vibrant as it is.

More important, just like the early iPhone, Amazon has managed to turn the Echo into the center of a new ecosystem. Developers are flocking to create voice- controlled apps for the device, or skills, as Amazon calls them. There are now more than 300 skills for the Echo, from the trivial — there is one to make Alexa produce rude body sounds on command — to the pretty handy. It can tell you transit schedules, start a seven-minute workout. read recipes, do math and conversions, and walk you through adventure games, among other possibilities.

Makers of digital home devices like Nest are also rushing to make their products compatible with the Echo. Alexa can now control your Internet—connected lights, home thermostats and a variety of other devices. Hardware makers can also add Alexa’s brain into their own devices, so soon you won’t need an Echo to consult with Alexa — you could find it in your toaster, your refrigerator or your car.

In design, they’re simple. They’re very traditional earbuds, with a small circular bulb that holds a few microphones and a processor. All the processing of sound is done individually on each bud, and they can be calibrated to each user's individual separate ears. Their software leverages tried-and-true acoustic techniques for noise cancellation and effects, but also machine learning algorithms able to adapt to your surroundings.

The app associated with the Here buds has three tabs: a volume knob, which is the master switch for the volume of your world; an equalizer, coupled with effects like echo and reverberation; and a tab split into Tune In and Tune Out, which are pre-made filters meant to either enhance the soundscape or cut it out tailored to certain situations.

A new On The Go (OTG) wearable charging cable for smartphones, called Thino, is a portable charger, battery back-up, and data transfer all in one compact, durable and lightweight aluminium body! Thino has a dual side USB connector and is able to detect and switch between different USB charging methods such as charging downstream port (CDP), dedicated charging port (DCP) and standard downstream port (SDP). Thino is able to supply any Android and iOS device with the maximum current it can draw from the source. The built-in 480mAh Lithium Polymer battery can be used as a portable back-up battery to keep your device up and running for 2 hours.

The metal detector-style ping is similar to the proximity alerts of other stuff-finder tools, such as the successful Kickstarter project Tile. Like Tile, Pixie communicates with an iPhone via Bluetooth. Unlike Tile, it’s sold in packs of four, which the app can name to keep each one identifiable. Together, three of the Pixies ping out signals to better triangulate the location of the one you can’t find, at a range as far as 50 feet indoors and 200 feet outdoors. Outside that range, it’ll remember the item’s last location.

Four in five Peruvians don’t have a bank account, but in a country of 30 million people, there are about 32 million cell phones. So the leading Peruvian banks have teamed up to get money moving through those phones. On Dec. 15, Peru Digital Payments, a company owned and operated by the country’s leading financial institutions, launched Bim, a mobile payment program that unites all their online customer interfaces on one system.

“We want this program to reach the people who don’t have bank accounts,” says Carolina Trivelli, who’s overseeing Bim and previously ran the government’s development ministry. “That’s the woman who lives in the countryside and has a nine-key cell phone, a 2G connection, and a prepaid phone plan.”

Peru’s software is the first of its kind: While there are 255 mobile money programs in 89 countries around the world, no other program includes all of a country’s banks, and the majority allow transactions only between customers of the same phone company. By February all three major Peruvian carriers will offer users access to Bim.